


ghost song

by xSparklingRavenx



Category: End of Eternity | Resonance of Fate
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-08 02:35:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14095221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xSparklingRavenx/pseuds/xSparklingRavenx
Summary: As a little girl, Posey’s parents often told her of the ghosts that haunted Basel in the shadows of the gears. They spoke of spirits of those who had died suddenly in the outbreak of Sudden Death syndrome, forgotten by Zenith, left to wander the tower alone and spook her if she misbehaved. She never believed them. Without proof, there was no need to be frightened of what didn't exist.When she finds herself drawn to the abandoned building on 11th Street though, Posey soon finds that what she thought may not necessarily be what is true. As strange things begin to occur around her, she starts to wonder if her parents were really just telling stories. After all, there is something residing in Ebel City, something not quite alive, but something that isn't quite dead either.An AU where the Sacred Sign doesn't save a person from death, but doesn't allow them to just pass on either.





	1. Haunting

**Author's Note:**

> Me, writing from the POV of a non-relevant NPC in an already niche fandom: this is an excellent decision.
> 
> I have a lot to say about this fic, so I've included all that information in the end notes. Please check them out. Also, if you're read my other RoF works, you might notice that this is a bit of a change from how I've written the past ones. I hope you enjoy this style!

When she had been a little girl, Posey’s parents often told her of the ghosts that haunted Basel in the shadows of the gears. They spoke of spirits of those who had died suddenly in the outbreak of Sudden Death syndrome, forgotten by Zenith, left to wander the tower alone and spook her if she misbehaved. These stories scattered through the playgrounds of children like a fire in a forest, common tales told to naughty children who stole sweets in the middle of the night or refused to do as they were told. Seeing as none of her friends had ever been haunted by the phantoms here parents swore by, her younger self had decided she could safely ignore the stories, and in time, she forgot about them all together.

On the very edge of Ebel City’s 11th Street stood an old building, its signposts crumbling as time wore away at its edges. Posey often spent her time there, seasons passing her by as she overlooked the skyline of Basel itself. While the city was typically calm, the street had always felt off for her. In the summer, hostile, cold winds brought the scent of gunfire and warfare, while the winter dragged in a deathly cold. Sometimes it sent shivers up her spine. Sometimes it turned her stomach inside out. Mostly she put up with it to cast her gaze over everything the city had to offer.

She wasn’t the only person to notice either. Coffee with Betty revealed that she’d once seen the door of the old building swing open on an otherwise still day. Andrew swore blind that he’d seen shadows in the window when he stood outside it. Daniel agreed on the smell of gunpowder, unmistakable and raw. Everyone knew there was something to the building; it was an open secret, one of the stranger aspects of an already odd city.

It reminded Posey of her parents stories, of phantoms and spirits. The morbid side of her, the one that imagined Basel’s end whenever there was a blackout, found the idea fascinating and terrifying. She didn’t know when she’d stopped looking at the skyline to stare at the building, but before long it was all she could focus on in her free time. What could be inside, she wondered. What secrets hid behind its metal walls?

She had always been a dreamer. Maybe in another life she could have been a story teller, a weaver of words, but Zenith knew she had no talent for that. She was just a woman, one of many, who worked in the food store and stood on the fringes of Ebel City in her free time, watching the world go by while she imagined a life on Chandelier.

Curiosity was curious in itself though, and even in someone as ambitionless as her it grew and grew until it was insatiable. She found herself drawing ever closer to the building, longing to knew what lay beyond the front door, to understand the atmosphere of 11th Street. She had never been struck by lust, but maybe this was it, a thirst for the unknown, for something to come along and turn her routine around. She had always thought that in life, she was going to just fade into the background, but for the first time, she felt a pull towards something.

It was that pull that finally dragged her towards the front door on one stiflingly hot summer’s day. Allcott stood at the end of the path as he always did, hands clasped behind his back, his inquisitive eyes on her. Maybe he felt the pull as she did. Her heart hammered as she approached. No one had ever taken the plunge and gone in, but the need to know was burning her up inside, a passion she had never quite known.

She drew near the door slowly, each step sending fearful jolts through her chest that warn her to turn back, to leave the mystery a mystery. What if, she thought, there was nothing? What if they had all just imagined something in a desperate attempt to turn the normality of their lives upside down? Doors opening could be explained by a sudden wind. Shadows could be just tricks of light. The smell could be just nearby PMFs. She steeled herself with a deep breath, closing her fingers around the handle.

It was bone cold, sharp and painful against her warm skin. “Normal,” she told herself, even though the day was hot. Anything metal was cold when old and disused, she thought.

She also knew that it should be burning in direct sunlight. “Normal, normal, normal…”

The door, while rusty, swung open easily once she applied pressure. She held her breath, but the scene that opened out to her was what she had been expecting. For as long as she’d been living in Ebel – two years – this building had been unoccupied and it showed. Dust was layered high, old bottles lazing around the surfaces. Her skin crawled as spiders hung in their webs. On one wall there was a chalkboard, strewn with old marks but otherwise empty. Mostly the room was just still, like an ocean without wind to guide it.

She appraised the room before finally gathering her courage and stepping in. The smell hit her immediately, overpowering and harsh, and the icy air was cruel to her skin. She rubbed her bare arms in an attempt to warm them up as she tasted the gunpowder cruel on her tongue. Her emotions felt wrong. Grief was heavy in the air, so thick that it turned her insides into a cocktail of sand mixed with water. She covered her mouth as the despair overcame her, powerful and unrelenting.

“Hey…”

Posey jumped, wailing as she stumbled back and crashed into a table. The contents of the surface scattered to the floor, paper and glass, the former landing softly while the latter shattered into thousands of glittering pieces. “Who—who’s there?” she screeched.

All was quiet. The voice had been like air, ephemeral and barely there. Maybe she hadn’t heard it at all. Maybe her nerves were simply playing with her. She had been so ready to find something that maybe her mind had projected it.

No. The room was wrong. She could _taste_ the gunpowder.

The temperature in the room fell further. When she exhaled, she could see her breath. This was no illusion. There was something here. Fear and a sense of excitement blended together, leaving her breathless. Turning, she stopped short when her eyes fell on the chalkboard, her blood stilling in her veins.

The name _Victor_ was written there.

Grief rose up in her chest, a tsunami of emotion. Her stomach flipped as she went to flee. If her heart was hammering before, it was jack-knifing now, trying to free itself from her chest as a desperate voice echoed around her. She sprinted for the door, all but throwing herself out of the old house.

Frightened wasn’t quite the word to describe how she felt. She was trembling, no, shaking – but that wasn’t all there was to it. Coming to a stop down the path, her knees wavered tenuously beneath her. Allcot was still standing there, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. “Posey?”

Her breathing came fast, her chest heaving hard. “There…” she began, but her breathlessness cut her off as she edged away from the building. “There was something…!”

Something, but she didn’t know what. Silence. Allcott looked beyond her, behind her. “…Well, I’d never! Gremlins?”

Posey shook her head gravely, placing a hand on her chest to feel the unsteady rhythm beneath her skin. “No, no, not a gremlin in sight! I-I don’t know what it was, but there was something there! It wrote on the chalkboard!”

Allcott leaned forward, intrigue dancing in his aged eyes. “Wrote, you say?”

Nodding, she finally caught a full breath. “But the house was empty.”

Allcott laughed heartily as if she wasn’t a shaking mess before him. What must he have thought of her, all but tripping over herself in her haste to escape the building. “Are you suggesting something invisible, dear?”

“I…I have no idea.” What was she suggesting? Was she really saying that she thought that there was something supernatural in that house? Surely her parent’s stories couldn’t be true; not in her city of all things. But that would be to deny what had happened in there, and something obviously had. “It was…it was dreadful. I don’t think anyone should go in there alone.”

“Oh?” Allcott grinned, his eyebrows shooting up his head. “An interesting choice of words, I think. I don’t see you saying we shouldn’t go in there at all.”

She bit her lip. “There’s…well, I didn’t actually find anything out, so…”

“You want to go back in?”

“Uh, well, there was definitely something in there.”

“Well, let’s make a journey of it then!” Allcott declared as if he was rejuvenated by the idea. “Not right now, though. You look as pale as a stone. Make sure you’re prepared before wandering back in there, you hear?”

Well, that was a surprise. She hadn’t expected that from the old man at all. “You want to know what’s in there?”

“Of course!”

“Oh, well, thank you then!” Posey said. “Perhaps tomorrow, I have nothing to do then. Will you be here? Actually, are you even sure about this?”

“My dear, I’ve always wanted to take a look in there; I’ve just never found it in these old bones to actually do it. My son is always going on about these urban legends. Won’t he be amazed to hear I’ve actually gone and looked into one!”

Posey thought it over, pursing her lips. “Then we’ll do it. I’m going to go for now…figure out what just happened. I still can’t believe what I saw.”

“That’s understandable. Take all the time you need. I’ve got to say, young lady, I’m excited!”

With that, they bid each other farewell, Posey making her way back home. The voice she had heard briefly looped in her head on replay, bringing with it the memory of how despair had swallowed her up in that room. It was hard to attach any defining characteristics to it, given how airy it had been, but it had been deeper than a woman’s.

She wished she’d heard more. She wished she’d never heard it at all.

She spent the rest of the day thinking about it, and that night she tossed and turned in her bed, lying awake as the gears turned unfailingly around her. They were as present and noisy as ever, a distraction that didn’t help. From her window she watched the sky turn from black to orange, and then finally to blue. The night hadn’t been a long affair this time, but Basel’s irregular day cycles meant nothing when you had grown up with them.

Sleep was fitful, but she managed a few hours eventually before rising to face the day. She dressed in her favourite red dress for luck before heading out for the morning. It was still early, but she always saw Allcott walking around no matter what time of day it was. Maybe the man didn’t sleep. Maybe he was an early riser too.

There were a few people awake around Ebel, but it was mostly those who were on their way to work, like Daniel or Lily. She said her hello’s, they said them back, and it felt like normal, like less than twenty four hours before she hadn’t been investigating a creepy house that definitely edged too far on the side of _weird._  Regardless, she hadn’t been wrong about Allcott. As she’d predicted, he was indeed standing at the same place as yesterday, just waiting.

“You must be eager.” was the first thing out of his mouth. “Good morning Posey! You look exhausted.”

“Good morning Allcott. I’m fine,” she reassured him, fidgeting on the spot. Her hand found the material of her dress, which she scrunched up in her hands. Was she frightened, or simply just a version of excited that didn’t fit the standardised definition? She wasn’t sure. “I could barely sleep last night, is all. I was thinking.”

“I see, I see! My wife is like that, as soon as an idea captures her, that’s it! She’ll be up all night staring at the ceiling, talking at me about this or that. I can’t say I listen too hard, but don’t tell her that, alright?” he laughed heartily, shaking his head. “Well, whenever you’re ready dear. Don’t let this excited old man rush you.”

“I’m ready right now,” she said, her knuckles white as she clutched her dress. “I can’t wait a moment longer!”

Allcott was halfway up the path before she could say anything else. “I’ve been waiting ages to have a good look in here. I’m glad someone braver than me found the courage to go in first. I wonder if old Café Chelsey is like this. I used to frequent it, you know, but that abandoned old place has such a threatening air about it. I can’t say I’ve been there in a while.”

When she caught up to him, she saw he had his fingers wrapped around the door handle. “Oh,” he said. “This _is_ cold isn’t it?”

“Normal,” she said, because it wasn’t, because she needed to believe it was or the world would stop functioning how she knew it. Why couldn’t she reconcile herself? Part of her was desperate for there to actually be something, something to change everything she had known about their little world. Another part of her said no. That part of her wanted to stay looking over the skyline of Basel forever, fading into the background, becoming a part of the scenery.

“Normal, hah! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Posey, but it’s hotter than a flaming yeti out here.”

Posey couldn’t think of an argument to that so she just stood beside him, holding her breath as Allcott swung the door inwards. The room opened out before them, just as still as before, not a single emotion present in the stagnant air. She stared solidly at the scene before her, her breath escaping in a long, slow exhale.

Not a bottle was out of place. The table she’d knocked into the day before was righted, the papers replaced neatly on top of it. The glittering glass that had littered the floor was gone, seemingly cleaned away. In its place on the floor lay something new; a folded up newspaper.

“Looks like a pretty normal place to me,” Allcott said.

Posey stepped in, trying to keep her shoes from tapping too loudly against the floor. She noted the lack of scent, nothing like yesterday. “No…it was different when I was here yesterday. I knocked everything on that table there to the floor, but now it’s all gone.”

Allcott’s eyes honed in on the table. “Maybe we’ve all been wrong and other people have been here then?” he suggested, following her in. “The door wasn’t locked.”

Posey frowned, walking to where the folded newspaper lay. It was a fair assumption, a perfectly reasonable explanation, but it didn’t sit right. “I don’t know Allcott…this wasn’t here yesterday either. Look,” she bended to retrieve it. It was think in her hands, like time had ripped at the layers until only limited fibres of paper remained. She turned the cover to read the headline. “What’s this?”

“Lucia?” Allcott said in surprise. “Why, I remember that, surely you must too? It wasn’t too long ago. An entire army squadron, wiped out without a trace. Cardinal Victor was killed too. Such a tragedy…I wonder why something about it is here.”

Her blood turned to sludge. She had known about Lucia, of course she had, but she hadn’t put the pieces together until now. “Victor…” she whispered, turning to the chalkboard which was now also wiped clean.

Allcott sighed. “He was such an admirable man. Loved his wife, Cardinal Theresa, dearly from what I’ve heard.”

Posey scanned the article quickly, her eyes finding Victor’s name easily but nothing else of note. “Yesterday…yesterday the chalkboard said ‘Victor’.”

“Is that so?” Allcott glanced away from her to look at the chalkboard too. He couldn’t keep the delight from his face. “So perhaps there _is_ a spirit in this place! Who might be here, a person?”

Something clattered behind them. Posey whirled on the spot with a gasp in time to see one of the bottles she’d seen yesterday rolling on the floor. It came to a stop by her foot, bringing with it the smell of gunpowder once more.

“Hello?” she stammered, a delicate sound that she could barely hear from her own lips.

Allcott took it upon himself to pick up the bottle and put it back, groaning as he bent. “Whatever it is here, it seems to want our attention. Oh my, it stinks of war all of a sudden!”

Posey looked back to the paper before casting her gaze on the bottle. “War…um. Hey, are you Victor?” she asked aloud, feeling a fool.

Nails on a chalkboard. Posey slammed her eyes shut as she pressed her hands to her ears. “Ah!” she cried, ducking her head down.

The screech was unbearable.

When she forced her eyes back open, she determined that Allcott was either deaf of just infallible. He stood before her, staring straight ahead at where the chalkboard was. “What—?” she begun to ask, only to cut herself off when she followed his line of sight.

She couldn’t breathe. There was something _there_ , just standing, back turned to them. A mirage of a man, a sculpt of hair pulled into a ponytail, the image of broad shoulders and the drowning desperation that followed every strand of air in this godforsaken house. It was like looking at something that was both a man and not a man, a painting done by something who knew what a human was but had never actually seen one in person. It both was and wasn’t, and Posey was struck cold by its very presence.

Almost as soon as she’d figured the shape out, understood what she had been staring at, it was gone in wisps. Only white chalk was left behind on the black surface of the board.

_Vashyron._

The seconds that it took for her body to restart felt like lifetimes. Ghosts, spirits, phantoms, remnants; all of the things her parents had told her that she’d written off were suddenly a lot more real. What did this mean? Was it a glitch in Basel’s system, like how Level 7 was half tundra when it shouldn’t be? She was still holding the newspaper, though it now shook in her grasp. Grief in the air, a war in monochrome on a page, a scrawled name left behind before her eyes. It made sense.

Allcott spoke first. “Did you see what I just saw?” he asked, his voice trembling lightly.

“A man,” she said, still paralysed. “N-no, not just a man. Vashyron.”

Like uttering a spell, the name warmed the room considerably. It was as if the sun had risen over the horizon and chased the cold away. A penny dropped. “Is…is that what you wanted?” she asked the house. “You wanted someone to realise you were there?”

There was no response, but the awful smell of death had dissipated. “What powers a spirit?” Allcott wondered. “I don’t know about you, Posey, but that little show there looked as if it would have been quite difficult to pull off.”

He seemed awfully calm again all of a sudden, she thought, especially when her insides were still in knots. “I can’t believe this,” she said, covering her face. “This can’t be real.”

“But it is!” Allcott said, his face lit up in awe. “Don’t you see? This is an amazing discovery! Won’t my son and wife be amazed to hear this…you said the spirit wrote Cardinal Victor’s name last time? Well, I’d say that and the newspaper together mean something very obvious.”

“What’s that?”

“That young man – Vashyron – must have left the paper there for you to find! I’d suggest he was an acquaintance of Cardinal Victor who fought alongside him in the war. Perhaps the paper has an obituary for him and the others who were lost?”

Allcott’s logic made sense, but her insides were still frayed. “You might be right. Um. Vashyron?” she paused, then continued. “May I take this paper back home with me?”

There was no response, but the atmosphere stayed the same, welcoming and warm, so she deemed that favourable. “I wonder what we should do with all this information.” Allcott said. “I don’t know a great deal about this subject matter. As far as I know, Zenith and its teachings don’t say much about this kind of thing.”

“We could tell our friends maybe?” Posey suggested. “It seemed like he wanted to be noticed. If they believe us, maybe we can figure out some way to help him?”

“If I were a ghost trapped in a house, I’d certainly be lonely.”

“And if I were a dead soldier, I’d probably feel awful too…” The two of them met each other’s eyes. “Let’s do it.” Posey said, the smallest smile playing on her lips. She hadn’t felt this alive in a long time.

When she decided to poke her head in the next day, she found a new message on the chalkboard, scribbled but sweet.

_Red is your colour. Pretty easy on the eyes too._


	2. Miracle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Half a year passes. As Posey gets to know Vashyron and the town become familiar with him, they discover that his charming nature hides instability beneath. Death is not as clear cut as it seems, and it begins to appear as if Vashyron has lost something when he died.
> 
> As Christmas approaches and a dreadful news arrives from Level 7, it becomes clear that the mystery of Vashyron is the least of Ebel City's problems. A new spirit is making its home in Ebel, but whether it is friend or foe remains to be seen.

It turned out that Vashyron was happy to cooperate when he wanted people to know he was haunting the old building on the edge of Ebel City. Posey hadn’t seen him again in his nearly corporeal form, but he was more than willing to scribble sweet fancies on the chalkboard or whisper _“Hey,”_ when someone didn’t believe there was anything more to the place.

Rose nearly fainted when he wrote _“A more beautiful woman I’ve never seen,”_ in her presence.

Posey wondered why he’d never written _“I’m here_ ” in the first place instead of being vague and writing Victor’s name instead. He clearly had nothing to gain from hiding, but he’d since offered up no explanation. Whatever the case, it soon became common knowledge to the people of Ebel that there was something in the house, something that no one could explain but still managed to exist in spite of it. Posey searched for anything in the teachings of Zenith, but found nothing.

She didn’t know if that was comforting or not.

It was just one of those things, whatever that meant. A miracle? She didn’t know if she could call living on like that a miracle, but it was definitely something. _Possibilities_ was the word Vashyron often scrawled across the chalkboard, sometimes filling up every blank space with it. She didn’t know what he was trying to convey with it, and it only served to make her more confused.

“Maybe the young man lost his mind when he lost his body,” Allcott joked in bad taste when they saw the word thrown carelessly across the chalkboard the first time. It was hard to tell if Vashyron found it funny or not. The air had warmed considerably, so maybe he had.

It felt ridiculous to use the word ghost, so she settled for spirit. It was easier to convince other people too with it. It was too easy to imagine a man dressed in a white sheet using the former, which didn’t help much. People were too willing to ignore it when it seemed like nonsense, and she needed people to _know._

The truth, though, was that nothing much changed. Everyone still went about their days as they always had; just now it was with the knowledge that they were one citizen extra. There was some talk about maybe getting a Cardinal down to investigate, and Charles as very interested in the prospect of opening it up as an attraction, but in the end both ideas were shot down. Charles would have to find another way to make money. Using a dead man to do it just seemed to be indecent.

Like her friends, Posey kept doing what she had always done. The distinct lack of bitter colds or the sense of gunfire when she stood on 11th Street was welcome. Grief still lay beneath the undertones of the breeze from time to time, but it had become harder to detect. It was even harder to imagine herself fading away into the background now when she knew it had been her who had done this, her who had taken the plunge, her who had found her way to a lonely spirit and made him known.

He could be such a _pest_ though. The first time Lily went to the old building, she’d only taken one step over the threshold when a gust of unprecedented wind nearly blew her skirt up. Though she had been unfazed, Posey was completely mortified. “My, looks like our invisible friend enjoys the company of pretty women,” Lilly had joked.

A heart appeared on the chalkboard. _Date me, sweetheart._

The real question that had to be answered now was how he’d gotten there. Lucia was all the way down on Level 6, and according to the paper, Vashyron had definitely died there. It was the subject that drove her to sit in the abandoned house one day, staring at the chalkboard while he accommodated for her by making the air warm.

“Hello there Vashyron,” she said. “Can we talk?”

_“Bored?”_

There was something that was still unsettling about seeing lines appear on the chalkboard of their own volition. It reminded her that this wasn’t right, that Vashyron was unnatural. She shook her head. “More…more intrigued I think. I’m interested in you.”

_“Most women are. Were. Something like that.”_

She smiled, a soft, sad little thing. “I’m sorry. Are you…are you upset about all this?”

_“Be more weird if I wasn’t. Can’t be that sad when I’ve got such lovely company though.”_

It barely fit on the chalkboard. She blushed, covering her mouth. “You’d say that to any woman that came in here, wouldn’t you?”

_“Guilty as charged.”_

She laughed – was he flirting with her? She couldn’t deny that she was having fun. There was a reason she came here though. “Hey, Vashyron? How did you get here, to Ebel?”

Silence. She thought she saw his form flicker in the corner of the room by where the bottles sat, the barest glimpse of a man trying and failing to grip the neck of one. The air took on a sudden chill, the smell of war. Her stomach lurched. She stood quickly. Had the question upset him?

When he acted like this, when he stopped being charming and writing sweet nothings on chalkboards, she’d suddenly remember that she wasn’t talking to an invisible person, she was talking to a _dead_ man. He wasn’t human, he was just dead, and it was sad and it was draining and he could be frightening.

Chalk on the board, screeching a terrifying song. _“If you hold your own I can use you.”_

What? She held her tongue and her breath.

When he wrote again, it was scrawled over the words he’d already written. _“Everyone else is just dead weight.”_

It felt like a threat. Maybe it was. She stumbled back, one step, two steps, and then turned tail to run for the door. She needed to escape. Spirits were an unknown and she didn’t know what he could do to her if he was unhappy.

The air warmed as her hand touched the door. “Wait,”

She froze. Should she turn? She was breathing fast, her arm outstretched. The voice, when it spoke again, was like honey, warm and smooth and relaxing. “Didn’t mean to spook you.”

When she turned, he was standing there. There was something off about him, the way his form flickered and wasn’t quite present, but he was definitely there. For the first time she could make out details; blond hair, a chiselled jaw, a dashing, crooked grin. He said, “Is this better sweetheart?”

Her vocal chords refused to work, unable to find the words that she wanted to say. She wanted to reach out, affirm that he was there, but when she tried she found herself paralyzed. “Struck by my good looks? Be quick about it, can’t stay long.”

There was something melancholy about his gaze, heart wrenching and painful. Finally finding her words, she said again, “How did you get here, Vashyron?”

“Possibilities.” he said. When that didn’t satiate her curiosity, he spoke again. “I wandered. Lucia was a graveyard that I wasn’t about to stick around in. No one else like me though.”

”You were the only one?” 

He didn’t look her in the eye, tilting his had upwards to look at the ceiling. “Yep. You know what regret is like? I do. Couldn’t save a damn one of them. Anyways, I found myself here somehow. Nice place, you know? Lonely as hell too. Guess I get my power from the living, ‘cause all I could do before you and the old guy showed up was a whole lot of nothing.”

Biting her lip, Posey took a step towards him. “Is that why you wrote _Victor_ on the chalkboard?”

He looked back to her, inclining his head. “What did I do now?”

“The first time I came here, you wrote his name.”

He sighed heavily, one hand going into his pocket. She realised he was wearing a soldier’s uniform. “You know, I’m not all me. Not what I was. Half the time I’m reliving the crap I went through, and a lot of that is to do with Victor. Spent pretty much my last moments with him before I bit it. Guess I was running on autopilot.”

His form flickered dangerously, like a light bulb in a Basel-wide blackout. She had to be quick. “You don’t remember then? Vashyron, can you even leave this place?”

“I remember you in red.” he said, which meant he didn’t recall the first time after all. “And I can’t leave. Not got the strength for something like that.”

Sadness weighed heavy in her heart. When he vanished seconds later, she stared after his afterimage for what felt like years. His body had died, but whatever was left had lived on alone and unable to do a thing about it. Did he even know how long he’d been haunting the premises?

The worst part was that she couldn’t do a thing to help.

The building went back to its still state, Vashyron not offering up anything even via the chalkboard, so she left to watch the day go by. It was a beautiful one at least, the sun shining high and the breeze drifting along cheerfully, but she couldn’t stop her brain from working. For whatever reason, Vashyron had been forced to stay behind while the other victims of Lucia had moved on to whatever was beyond this life. She didn’t to think about death, because Posey’s mind always told her that nothing existed beyond it. What if this was it? What if life was pointless? What if it was hardship and struggles just to be trapped in a building powerless and alone?

Nausea was an old friend in her stomach. She didn’t know who to talk to, so she ended up drifting down to Razzle Street. She spent the rest of the day in Lily’s Boutique, thumbing through the clothes rack to take her mind off things. There was a tacky new shirt with the face of a pig on it. It wasn’t really her style. She couldn’t picture anyone she knew buying it.

She didn’t visit the building for another week, busying herself with work. Posey knew that Allcott dropped in from time to time and Miranda occasionally went in to ‘look for inspiration’, so she didn’t feel guilty. The truth was that she didn’t _want_ to face the idea of ghosts or spirits now. Be careful what you wish for, she thought. She had wanted it to be real to drag her out of the easy everyday glumness that followed her around like a clingy mutt. Now, she felt like she was on the edge of a cliff that only lead to an existential crisis.

For half a year she did this. For a while she was only visiting out of obligation, and she believed Vashyron could sense it. His conversation was more clipped, though still informative. She found out he had been twenty one when he’d died, that he used to subsist on cheap booze and cheap women. He was a good soldier, he said, who had found death by something with wings that he would never be able to explain.

Vashyron disappeared for a month after he told her that. His explanation had been accompanied by a loss of awareness in his eyes and a whirlwind that had almost destroyed the interior of the building. She had been there with Daniel that day, and the two of them had run for their lives at the sudden change in his demeanour. When Posey poked her head in the day after, expecting it to clean as it normally was after Vashyron had thrown something, she found it still a mess.

When he came back, long after she had come to terms with the fact that he might not, the message on the chalkboard was stilted and sad. _“I’m sorry. Shit happens. Didn’t mean to lose myself.”_

She felt so bad that she came every day that week.

Things changed in the winter. It started on the Friday, when she was down by the guild trying to catch a glimpse of the sun behind the rolling clouds. A storm was coming in, a blizzard maybe judging from the colour. Rose came speeding up to her, clearly fuelled by something scandalous given her exhilarated demeanour. “Good afternoon, Rose.” Posey said, bracing herself for the rush of information that was no doubt about to follow.

“Oh Posey! What a surprise to see you here,” Rose exclaimed, even though they both knew that Posey went there every afternoon to watch the sunset and that Rose frequented the area often. “Have you seen the job in the guild?”

Posey shook her head, so Rose continued, almost tripping over her own words. “Cardinal _Lagerfeld_ has issued a job! I hear that something big is going down at the Level 7 Seminary, would you believe? I haven’t managed to gather many details yet but this sounds _huge!_ It’ll go down in history, I say!”

The thing with Rose was, ‘it’ll go down in history’ could mean anything from making a cup of tea to Cardinal Rowen’s speech at Christmas Mass. “Wait, Rose, what do you mean? Do you know anything else?”

“Well, Cardinal Lagerfeld must be desperate, seeing as he’s reaching out to PMFs all over Basel!”

“Have any of our PMFs gone to take the job?” Posey fretted.

“Not that I’ve heard of, but I _did_ hear that there’s a death toll and it’s rising. Oh my, what a story! I’m sure definitive news will trickle through soon enough!”

She left in a whirlwind after that, no doubt off to tell someone else. Posey watched her go, startling as something cold and wet landed on her shoulder. Snow. It was snowing. The storm had finally rolled in, only now it had brought with it dreadful sounding news.

She yearned to know what awful thing was happening in a place of Zenith only three levels below, but something told her that she didn’t want to know. Rose had said “death toll”. Oh, there was enough tragedy in their world already, why did there need to be more?

The news had sent her mind reeling, thinking up every bad thing it could. She was lucky and she knew it. Cranktown was a million miles away from her life and her city. Being so close to Chandelier meant that little of note really happened on Level 4. Sure, they had Vashyron, who no one could explain, but the worst that they ever got was the thugs and bandits on Rainy Bridge. Being so close to the top didn’t stop her pessimism. Every time a blackout struck the city she knew they were coming one closer to the whole tower coming down.

She gripped the railing between her and a long plunge into the gears of Ebel tight, white knuckled as she felt the cold chill her to the bone. The snow was falling faster now, coating everything in a fine, powdery dust. She was sick to her stomach, and even long after she went home she felt it, swirling round and round her chest until she could barely think straight.

It started on Friday, but the real change came with the rising of the sun on Saturday morning. The snow had fallen throughout the night, thick across the sidewalks of Ebel, but had finally stopped. She left her house to find a commotion in the city; more specifically, a commotion on 11th Street.

Her first sign that something was very wrong was the air when she arrived. Despair hung so heavy that it almost turned her back, dragging her pessimistic thoughts from their home in her head, spreading them like a plague. It felt like death, smelled like blood. It was different to when Vashyron wasn’t in control of himself and projected his final moments outwards. This was grief, but in a different way. Vashyron’s was regret, a longing to save a friend who had already been killed. This was a desperate clawing, a thirst for blood that was chased by a bone crushing sorrow.

She nearly turned back, not understanding how anyone could be standing there when it was turning every thought that passed through her head to poison. “What’s going on?” she asked the first person she got to. It was Theodore, who was looking a mix between agonised and perplexed. “What’s happening? Please tell me.”

He scratched his head, and then gestured to the old building that Vashyron called home. “All this just went down, literally, like, just a few minutes ago. So, um. Apart from that…thing, in the air, take a look.”

She did. It was hard to see at first, given the amount of snow and people in the way, but it quickly became clear what was wrong. She gasped, covering her mouth.

The windows had been blown out, as if something had exploded inside the house and taken them out with the aftershock. The glass was dotted among the snow, shards everywhere. The door was wide open, more snow having blown inside. When she got closer, she could see that the bottles that usually littered the surfaces were scattered across the floor in varying degrees of broken, the light fixtures were swinging, and the chalkboard was in two halves on the floor.

That was not the most pressing part of it all though. Vashyron had said that he drew power from people, and now the whole damn city was here. He was stood, looking very corporeal, in the centre of the whole disaster. A teenage boy was on his knees before him. Vashyron’s expression was unreadable, but the boy was too hunched over for her to get a good look, his face covered by a hood and his own hands.

It took her a few seconds to realise that all the blood thirst and sorrow was emanating from _him,_ spiralling outwards uncontrollably. She wanted to claw her own eyes out, drag her own nails down her face, anything to stop these awful, awful emotions. Despite his corporeality, the boy was as dead as Vashyron.

Vashyron looked up. Sharply, he said, “Go.”

The door swung shut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always thought it would be interesting if ghosts could project their last moments outwards, whether that be their emotions of their environment.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	3. Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The truth of the new ghost that has appeared in Ebel City isn't as clear cut as it initially appears. For Posey, the awful truth is about to come spilling out, and what she learns might change her opinion on the spirits that have infiltrated their city forever.

The door was jammed shut.

“We could just go in through the windows,” Andrew said as they all gathered in the guild after everything had gone down. “It’s not like they’re blocked off.”

“Are you kidding?” Betty exclaimed. “Being on 11th made me want to die and I’m not even being overdramatic. I was fine with Vashyron spilling war and lust into my oxygen every now and then, but that new ghost is terrifying. It was influencing how I felt!”

Posey was at least grateful that she hadn’t been the only one to experience how the new spirit had made her feel. “Vashyron probably shut the door for a reason,” Miranda said. “Maybe it’s dangerous.”

Charles snorted a laugh. “ _Maybe?_ Sweetcheeks, I saw the moment those windows went. Heard it too. BANG, right, and then glass spraying everywhere. That ghost is off the rails.”

“Then we ain’t going through any windows.” Izzy said. “I’ll board ‘em up later if someone comes with me. Don’t need that ghost influencing me none.”

What Posey couldn’t get out of her head though, was how small that boy had looked. Vashyron was young, yes, but he was still undeniably an adult. The boy had been exactly that – a boy, a teenager who had looked beyond saving. How could someone that young spill out so many negative emotions?

Rose bought them the paper later, the bad news sprawling across the front page like an omen. _Seminary Massacre leaves over 30 dead._ Children killed by one wayward student, two PMF’s slaughtered before a third finally managed to put the killer down. By the time her son, Lex, had read out the article, everyone in the room knew that their ghost had to be a victim. “Explains the way it felt out there,” Allcott mused. “Nothing’s going to be the same after this. Murders happening in Seminary? That’s going to have consequences.”

Wringing her hands, Posey stared at the front of the paper. It didn’t feel right, but maybe this was just how spirits acted when they were new. She didn’t know when Vashyron took up residence in the old building, so she couldn’t be sure. Still though, what did it mean? Why had another spirit turned up after so long of there just being one?

Apart from Izzy and Theodore, who accompanied him, everyone sidestepped the street, avoiding it the moment they caught the stench of death. Though she was curious, Posey was too frightened to go near, remembering the look in Vashyron’s eyes, the sharpness of his voice. If he thought they should stay away, going as far as to jam the door shut, then she trusted him.

She kept the paper, reading it again and again despite how ill the article made her feel. Cranktown must have been reeling, being in such close proximity to the tragedy. How many people had lost children? How many children had no one to grieve for them?

Scouring the paper, she looked for details. The names of all the lost were written, including the PMFs who had died. More than half were lacking last names, a minute detail that was difficult to stomach. What was worse though, that apparently the killer was as young as many his victims. A fifteen year old boy, apparently labelled as a problem child anyway, finally brought down in a fierce fire fight with the third PMF that had been sent after him.

The PMF was labelled as a hero, the boy as bedevilled, and the two that had died were honoured for their work. The paper noted that a strange sigil had been left behind on the floor of the Seminary where the boy had died. Cardinal Lagerfeld had called it a sign, stating that God was in mourning and the entirety of Basel along with it.

The boy’s name had been Zephyr. No parents, no surname, just a sister who was among the victims. He had to have been possessed, surely, to have committed something as horrific as massacre. She wished she could detach herself from it, pretend it hadn’t happened, but now there was a victim in their city poisoning the air and haunting 11th Street she couldn’t bury her head.

She put the paper away. Posey went to work, went home, went to sleep, rinse and repeat. No one went near 11th Street.

It continued to snow, every morning bringing a new layer to Ebel. A week went past, and Posey found herself missing her favourite spot in the city. The paper stopped being splashed with news on the Seminary, life went on. Surprisingly, she even missed Vashyron, despite how uneasy he had made her feel.

The thing was, she had been talking to him for over six months, even if some of that had been out of a sense of duty more than anything else. Talking to Allcott revealed that he was feeling the absence of it too. The chats had become a part of her life, a part of the lives of many of the residents. “Isn’t it funny?” Lily said when she came past her shop and their conversation had turned to the topic of Vashyron. “He is dead, and yet, he is very much alive when we are talking to him. I wonder when he will let us back in.”

Lily’s words stayed with her for the rest of that day, and so the next afternoon, when she was done with work, she went to find Allcott.

She found him outside the guild, standing with his son. “Good afternoon, dear.” he said when she went over to him. “Isn’t it cold?”

“It is,” she nodded. “Um, Allcott. I was wondering, could I ask you something?”

“You just did.”

His son laughed. “Don’t be like that, dad.”

Allcott smiled. “It’s all good fun. Of course you can, Posey, go ahead.”

She interlaced her fingers nervously. “I’d like to try and see Vashyron. Would you like to come?”

His eyes lit up immediately. “Just like old times! I’d love to. I’ve been dying to know what’s been going on in there, though everyone’s turned 11th Street into some kind of _ghost_ town so I figured it wouldn’t be worth looking yet.”

Allcott’s son rolled his eyes at the not-so-subtle pun. “I don’t know about you dad, but I’m not going anywhere near there. Vashyron freaks me out enough, let alone that new ghost that was playing with everyone’s emotions.”

“Suit yourself.” said Allcott. “When you’re ready, Posey.”

11th Street was quiet when they arrived, the snow dampening the sounds of the gears as they turned. She had bundled up warm, but it was still freezing. It felt very much like the first time she had gone to the building, when it had still been unknown and daunting. Her heart was very much in her throat, especially when she breathed the first pangs of despair.

“Our new ghost certainly has a bite to him, hm?” Allcott said, sounding a bit strained. “Isn’t as strong as last time though. Maybe things have settled.”

She hoped so. The windows were completely covered with planks of scrap wood. Izzy had done a good job. Slowly, she went up the path to the front door, and in one quick movement, pushed down the handle and pushed.

It swung open easily. “Vashyron?” she said, noting the place had been cleaned. “Is anyone there?”

“Should we go in?” Allcott asked when there was no response. “Looks safe enough to me. What’s the worst that can happen? Stuff gets thrown around?”

Supposing he was right, she took a step over the threshold.

The room flashed dangerously before her eyes, like damaged light fittings, as the scenery changed to halls. Blood splattered walls surrounded her, on the verge of collapse. She could see bodies on the floor, slumped against debris where the ceiling had caved in. A machine gun fired, the sound ricocheting around like bullets. Screaming, children screaming, the adrenaline rush of a chase deep in her bones, she was not Posey.

The scene changed again. An idol rose above her, threatening and imposing all at once. Was she on the floor? Someone stood over her. Fear rushed through her body, freezing and cold, followed by acceptance. She could still hear screaming. A gun pointed down at her. It fired.

She stumbled backwards, out of the hall, out of the building. Things snapped back to Ebel City, and she realised it was _her_ who was screaming. Eyes wide, Posey immediately doubled over to vomit, her stomach trying to purge her of what she’d seen. Her emotions were skyrocketing, she could still feel the phantom bullet lodged in her stomach. “Posey!” Allcott exclaimed, his hands on her shoulders. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t catch her breath.

Was it real? What had happened? Heaving, she tried to raise her head, tried to look into the building to see if it was still the building and not the halls she had just been shot in. She could see the outline of the teenager, standing dead centre, more mirage than boy. Hands in his hair, eyes open wide, mouth caught in a silent cry.

The half of the chalkboard that hung on the wall was filled up with an almost illegible scrawl. _i should be dead i should be dead i should be dead ishouldbedeadishouldbedead._

For the first time she really understood that this wasn’t harmless, that Vashyron wasn’t just some spirit who hung out in Ebel City and occasionally did something scary. For the first time, she realised that they were being haunted. She was suffocating in this boy’s anguish.

Allcott reached out. She couldn’t catch her breath enough to stop him. He said, “Are you alright, child? It’s okay, it’s safe here.”

Something shifted in the air, a sudden surprise seeping outwards. The boy stared, before vanishing from sight. The chalkboard cleared with it.

Posey collapsed to her knees, staring straight ahead. “He—he showed me how he died,” she gasped. “So scared, so accepting, just staring at a gun. It couldn’t have been quick.”

She touched where she – he – had been shot. Allcott knelt beside her, wrapping an arm around her. “Ooh, these old bones…It’s alright, Posey, he’s probably just frightened. We don’t understand how they work, not really.”

“Neither do we.”

Posey snapped her head up. Vashyron stood at the very brink of the threshold in a kind of half existence, like he was barely there at all. “Kid’s stealing all my strength. Can’t even keep the door shut to keep you guys out right now. Thanks for coming by. With two of you here I actually feel like myself again.”

He paused, glancing back inwards. “Didn’t know how much we could affect the living, but guess I know now. I know what you saw sweetheart, I’m sorry he did that to you. I’ve been trying to get through to him but he’s…”

Vashyron trailed off vaguely, blinking out of existence before coming back. “Sorry about that. I’m exhausted. I’ll keep it short; I don’t know how he got here. Maybe he was drawn to me, or maybe there’s something about this city, I don’t know and I don’t care. He’s _really_ damn good at projecting emotion, even if he doesn’t know he’s doing it. I don’t have a clue what else we can do though. Had no idea about that thing he did to you.”

Pushing herself up, Posey held onto Allcott for extra support. The taste of vomit was still acid in her mouth, but she couldn’t just leave. “Do you…do you think maybe we could talk to him?”

“Might help if we had a name for him too,” Allcott said. “After all this time I still can’ believe that we’re having a conversation with the dead.”

“Trust me, if someone told me I’d be chatting to a bunch of living people after I’d died, I’d have told them to put the scotch down.” Vashyron said. “God, I’d kill for a drink. Come in if you want, just don’t come crying to me if I can’t help you out.”

Posey held her breath as she stepped in again, but this time nothing happened. Allcott seemed fine as he came in too. Vashyron lost his form finally, disappearing into the nothing, leaving them in the still air.

_“Still here,”_ Vashyron wrote on the half of the chalkboard.

“We’ll have to fix that for you,” Allcott said. Posey sat on the edge of the table, her fingers at her mouth. The other half of the chalkboard was on the surface beside her.

“Is he still here?” she asked. “The boy?”

_“You bet. He’s acting weird. Hang on.”_

She shared a look with Allcott. He shrugged. “Hang on for what?” she asked, but Vashyron didn’t offer anything else up. “Weird?”

She didn’t want to tell Allcott, but she was terrified as to what that could mean. Every nerve, instinct, and thought she had was telling her to run and leave this place. Posey was so caught up in the fear that she almost didn’t notice the chalk at the board beside her.

_“tell me why i’m here”_ it read, the handwriting shaky and messy. When they both stared at it, another line was added. _“is this what He wanted?”_

Her heart broke. This was the writing of the boy, she realised. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know. Can you tell us your name?”

_“i should be dead”_

That phrase again. She shut her eyes, turning her head away. “You already are,” she whispered.

_“then why am i here?”_ The chalkboard rattled. A wave of remorse and anger overtook her.

“I don’t know!” she snapped. “Stop asking!”

Silence. The chalkboard stilled. She slammed her hand over her own mouth, but it was too late. He was influencing her, changing her emotions to suit his. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Can you tell us your name?” Allcott asked. “We can try and help you. We helped Vashyron.”

_“Did you?”_ Vashyron wrote on his own board. _“I’m still stuck here.”_

Posey hoped he was just joking with them. She hoped he didn’t view their visits as meaningless.

The boy’s chalkboard rattled again, the letters slow and jagged. _“zephyr”_ it read.

Allcott’s face fell. Posey stared in horror. It had to be a mistake. There had to be something wrong. She remembered being on the floor, staring up at a gun. It hadn’t been the killer she realised.

It had been the third man. The hero PMF.

She recoiled from the chalkboard, stepping off the table. Vashyron wrote, _“Probably should have mentioned that.”_

“You knew?”

_“Pretty much. Didn’t know his name though.”_ A pause as the chalk erases to provide a fresh canvas. _“Think you scared him, sweetheart.”_

She almost laughed at the absurdity, at the idea that _she’s_ somehow frightened a _murderer._ Allcott shakes his head in disbelief. “Scared? What do you mean?”

“I don’t want to be here anymore.” Posey said, grabbing his arm. “I _can’t_ be here anymore. Vashyron, we’re leaving.”

The chalkboard stayed still. Her heart in her throat, she called again, wanting him to at least acknowledge they were going. “Vashyron, please reply?”

Nothing. Nothing at all. Her chest felt tight. Unease descended over her, the sensation of being watched. She had to turn around to get to the door, but everything inside her screamed not to, that she’d regret it.

She turned anyway.

Zephyr stood at the door, completely corporeal in a way Vashyron had never managed to achieve until the entire town had stood outside on 11th Street. Now she could see how baby blue his eyes were, how raggedy his brown hair was, the blood and tears in his hooded jacket and trousers. She could see the distress on his face, the way he was just a child who had not yet matured. How could this be the face of a murderer, she asked herself? He just looked so _young._

He looked so real. Was he draining Vashyron to do this? His voice trembled when he spoke. “I should be dead.”

It broke her. All he was projecting now was confusion and sorrow. He seemed to be stuck, the way he repeated the same phrase again and again. Allcott said, “Do you know what is that you’ve done, child?”

Zephyr nodded, fists clenched. “Because…God....”

“How could you think that?” Posey asked, her own voice trembling. “Your actions were yours, not anyone else’s! You’ve destroyed lives, taken them! How could you think that was because of anything else? How could you?”

Zephyr flinched, bringing his hands up to cover his ears. “I shouldn’t be here,” he whispered. “I should be gone too.”

“That doesn’t excuse it! What you did was horrifying! Dreadful! If this is your punishment, to be stuck in here for the rest of forever to relive what you’ve done, then perhaps you deserve it. I can only be sorry that the rest of Ebel City will have to live with you.”

Allcott looked completely stunned. It wasn’t anything compared to how shocked she felt at her own outburst. Posey, forever fated to fade away, was here in this building, screaming at the top of her lungs at the ghost of a murderer.

Zephyr looked on the verge of tears, though she found it difficult to be sorry for him. He didn’t even fight back, just vanished from sight.

When they were out on the street, Allcott stopped her. “Are you alright, Posey? That was unlike you. I’d never expected that.”

Posey ran a hand through her hair, shaking her head. “I-I don’t know what came over me. That ghost was powerful…maybe it was influencing me.”

“Maybe,” Allcott said, even though they both knew that he hadn’t. When she’d been shouting, all that rage and anger had been hers and hers alone.

When she went home, she read the paper cover to cover, and that night, she dreamt of halls painted in blood, a gun looming over her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should rename this chapter to 'Zephyr has a bad time' honestly.

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this fic came about in 2014, when I was talking about RoF theories to my sister and my dad offhandedly mentioned something like “what if they are all just in purgatory” as a joke. I thought, well hey, what if the Sacred Sign was a real big massive glitch in the system, but instead of saving the person, it just saves their soul? I wrote a quick 1500 word oneshot about Zephyr, Leanne, and Vashyron chilling as ghosts in Sweet Home, but there was something off about it and it never really worked. I still loved the idea though, so I kept it in mind. I included a reference to it in my drabble collection (good lord that's so old now), but that was about it. Like many other of my fic ideas, I put it aside and moved on.
> 
> Then Feb 2016 came along and I drafted the first chapter of this from Posey’s POV on a whim. For the first time it was working, but it still wasn’t enough, so I left it to work on other things. Cue Mid 2016 drama that left me rebuilding a lot of stuff from the ground up, my writing style also ended up getting a marked change. This fic got left in the dust as I started to work on my novel projects, but it was always there in the back of my mind, wanting to be let out.
> 
> SO...here it is again. After years of lounging in Development Hell on my laptop, I thought I'd rewrite what I had in my new style and at least put that out there. It's not finished yet, but there's still another 6k words of completed content to come after this chapter.I'll be posting those when I've edited them. Maybe this time I'll be able to finish it. It might be slow, but this is my passion project for RoF. I want it out there! >D
> 
> If you read all of that, thank you, and if you're willing to stick with me here on out, you're the best. Honestly! <3


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